Edmunds Model S Long-Term Test

Just noticed that Edmunds has introduced a P85 Model S to their long-term test fleet. Should be interesting to see more frequent updates on their experience than what Consumer Reports does (especially appreciate the first blog post being about doing burnouts).

Elon Musk is either a genius visionary or a complete fool. And we just paid him $110,000 to find out which.We have bought a 2013 Tesla Model S. It's ours and, unlike other newspapers, magazines and Web sites, we're going to test it without Mr. Musk loaning us the vehicle and tracking our every move.We've tested the Model S before. Several times. And it has consistently impressed us with its abilities and technology. But as with the rest of America's media, Tesla, which is based in Palo Alto, California and builds the cars in nearby Fremont, loaned us those sedans for evaluation. We would drive the car for a week or two and return it to Elon. In fact, the first Model S we tested was the man's personal car.But this time it's different. There are no time limits. And no scary big brother black boxes watching over us. It's our car. We paid for it. We picked it up at the Fremont factory with 50 Tesla-test-track miles on the odometer. And our plan is simple. We're going to drive the hell out of it for a year. We're going to drive it as much as possible. Where we want. When we want. And Mr. Musk can only sit back and read about it like everybody else.

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This is going to be interesting. I find the Edmunds' long-term tests useful because they include blog entries from a variety of reporters and editors on the staff, most of whom have different needs and preferences in a car. I have a feeling that there will be arguments over who gets to take the Model S out on any given day.

After the NYT article, Tesla is under the microscope. Every glitch, small and large will be seen as evidence of the car's failure by some of the press. Not knocking Edmund's here yet (the blog article was measured, the tweets.... Not so much), it's their job to report on the reliability, but the halo of BI, Jalopnik and other such sites jumping on these things and reblogging with glee is only going to get worse.

I tweeted at him that a touch screen can crash in any car to which he responded that the computer industry's update method doesn't belong in cars. I then said that I'm sure people said the same thing about phones 20 years ago.

It was an attempt at humor. I found it mildly amusing, myself. Though perhaps too soon.

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Yes, I thought it was kinda funny. Hopefully it turns out to be a minor problem and is quickly fixed. There is little doubt though that we'll start to see a lot more reporting about glitches in the car.

After yesterday's meltdown of the touchscreen in our new Tesla Model S, we ended the day at the local service center. This was after talking to a tech on the phone who asked us to try a hard reset of the screen by pressing the two roller buttons on the steering wheel. It didn't work, so a dealer visit was the next option.For us, this wasn't a big problem as the Los Angeles service center is only a few miles away. I dropped in at around 4:30 and the two service writers got on it right away. They pulled the fuse for the screen and let it sit for a few minutes so it would reset fully. After putting the fuse back in, the screen didn't immediately return to life, but the technician kept working on it and it eventually started up again.At that point they started to download the data logs from the car in an attempt to pinpoint the reason for the failure. The service writer said the logs were being sent up to headquarters where company engineers would look them over. This took longer than I expected, as it ended up being over an hour before there was any response. When all was said and done, the service writer said that they wanted to replace the screen entirely, presumably as a precaution against any further problems. I told him I would bring it back the following day.On the drive home, the screen worked fine and I experienced no additional problems, but we're definitely bringing it back in to have the swap done. More on that later.Ed Hellwig, Executive Editor @ 751 miles